Remy Zentar. Photo: Colin O'Brien
Chatsworth Road in Clapton is where Lord Sugar honed his business skills, flogging army surplus on a market stall. Now the long dead market is making a come-back.
In its ‘50s and ‘60s heyday, locals flocked to the market from all over north Hackney, stopping for a chat whilst stocking up on fruit and veg. But the market slowly shrank before finally snuffing it a decade ago.
A group of local traders and residents are working to revive it and they had their first big test the week before last, when 20 stalls sold everything from chocolate cake to vintage petticoats, second-hand bric-a-brac to vegan fare.
The Clapton scheme is just the latest in a recent spate of community-led markets; encouraged, no doubt, by the success of Broadway Market. There the Saturday market has facilitated the transformation of the entire street. Warring gangs have been replaced with mincing hipsters; areas that were “no-go” are now the place to be seen. But detractors are worried that the new markets, populated with yummy mummies on the prowl for “organic” olive oil, exclude the traditional working class communities. “Where are the jellied eels?” they wonder.
Remy Zentar, 44, the treasurer of the organisation behind the Chatsworth project, wants to assuage the fears of those who scream “gentrification” at the sight of a baguette.
“The old Hackney residents – the Turkish and the black community, the Irish, everyone – they are very excited about the market coming back,” he said.
Frenchman Zentar was keen to stress that the association is not aiming for a Broadway Market-style makeover, calling Hackney’s most successful Saturday market a “white ghetto.” And although his vision of a community brought together by cupcakes and charcuterie sounds naïve, residents and businesspeople on Chatsworth Road are overwhelmingly positive about the market.
Camille Roman, 26, works in Hop, a toyshop that sells organic baby care products and gifts that are popular with the “local Swedish community.”
“Sales were up 100% on Sunday,” she said.
Across the road in FutureTech – a family-run shop that sells mobile phone accessories, luggage and toys that probably aren’t popular with the local Swedes – Rizwan Bhatti is similarly enthusiastic.
“The community is mixed around here and the whole community enjoyed the market. It brings people together. And it brings new faces and that’s always good for business.”
Chatsworth Road is a diverse street – bijou little coffee shops boasting Financial Times reviews sit side-by-side with Nigerian Nollywood video shops – and the market looks set to follow that mixed bag template.
Mary Gillard, a 50-year-old massage therapist who lives in the area, went along to market.
“Chatsworth Road has changed a lot” she said, “but I don’t see why you can’t have the two – new and old.”
She’s confident that the Chatsworth Road street market won’t go down the route of Broadway Market.
“I don’t think it will get like Broadway Market because people round here don’t have pots of money.”
On Broadway Market, they seem oblivious that they’re being held up as an example of how to – or how not to – overhaul an East End market. Local businesspeople and residents are supportive of the 2004 regeneration, happy that the gangs who used to stalk the area have been removed, seemingly pleased that property prices have soared.
Aziz Ozdemir works at Broadway Fish Bar, a fish and chip shop that has been operating on the same premises for the past 56 years. “The market has done this area good. I used to not walk on this street because of gangs and now I do,” he said. “I think there should be a market on Saturday and Sunday.”
Simon Stone is a partner in Davey Stone, one of four estate agents located on the street.
“10 years ago you couldn’t have paid people to move here but now you have celebrities looking in the window – it has the same vibe as Shoreditch had a few years ago,” said the 37-year-old.
And his tip for the next Hackney hotspot? “Clapton.”
The Chatsworth Road had better watch out.
“The Battle for Broadway Market” by Emily James: http://vimeo.com/12992826
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we don’t care about £1.90 coffees and £5 crepes. We don’t care about vintage clothes and cupcakes. we just want employment and our community back. oh wait, that can’t happen – we’re being pushed out.
Community and green space/quietness from the city buzz were the 2 good things that hackney had 6 years ago: now both of them are being ruined.
Gentrification as a response to lower crime rates is the biggest joke I’ve ever heard: first of all, if crime rates were that bad there would be NO gentrification (yeah that’s right, however fake lefty-patronising some hipsters may be, a lot of them are uneasy around lower class people. I don’t recall any hipsters moving into Brixton in 1981). Second, crime is just being displaced to another area, it is NOT being solved. It’s probably actually making the problem worse as families loose their ties with the community when moving areas, communities which probably helped more than the police with consequences of crime.
Also gentrification feeds into crime because of rising frustration and sense of envasion.
The major argument being that people are reluctant to change is only partly true, people were reluctant to new waves of immigration since the 1910’s because there were issues of race which have now been lessened with modernity’s slightly more tolerant views. The issue of social status and income however is a different ballgame altogether. And no, gentrifying an area does NOT help working class locals improve their status and their communities’. It forces them out of the area.
Gentrification can be compared to mass tourism: people destroy what they came for in the first place. I’m sure Ibiza was nice 20 years ago. Now look at it.
I HATE what’s happening to Hackney, I’d rather have the old Hackney back anyday, crime rates and all.